


Cowboys are Frequently, Secretly

by Querulousgawks



Series: Tumblr Prompts [8]
Category: Veronica Mars (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Western, M/M, Pre-Slash, references to domestic abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-27
Updated: 2015-12-27
Packaged: 2018-05-09 16:27:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 693
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5547287
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Querulousgawks/pseuds/Querulousgawks
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Logan Echolls has got the eye, say the men (and the <em>hands,</em> say the ladies, though only to each other) to breed a horse like America has never seen, a horse that could carry the family up from its rut of meat and dust and petty rustler feuds.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cowboys are Frequently, Secretly

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lodessa](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lodessa/gifts).



Men know the Echolls spread for their imported cattle, their whispered connections back East, the hard-drinking banker’s sons who come west to shoot buffalo from train cars and stop to catch a glimpse of Trina’s ankles on the way. Women know it for Lynn Echolls’ arsenic skin and shaking hands, for the girls who come in laughing, flustered groups to work Trina’s parties - then sidle up alone, later, to the back door of a clinic two towns over.

A few from both groups think the ranch could be known for its horses, once the Echolls’ boy really hits his stride with that pet project of his: lines that cross failed racers too wild for the derby with stock from the Kane heirs’ steady, tireless driving teams. Logan Echolls has got the eye, say the men (and the _hands,_  say the ladies, though only to each other) to breed a horse like America has never seen, a horse that could carry the family up from its rut of meat and dust and petty rustler feuds.

Eastern magnates occasionally make the mistake of saying as much to the old man, who it turns out has no patience for his son’s hours in the canyons, his weeks at the tracks back east where he surely does more skirt lifting and scandal stirring than horse buying. What's the good to the ranch of a breed that no one but Logan could ride, that he's too soft or incompetent to break for anyone else’s use? A goddamn embarrassment, is all.

Eastern magnates never learn that these comments are a mistake, because no one pays for it until they are seen graciously off the premises, stuffed with steak and settled in their trains, ready to enliven the scenery with their long guns. They are long gone from the Echolls estate when Logan opens his father's wardrobe, listens to the light clear sound of the bottle hitting the edge of his mother's glass, recites bloodlines in his head to keep his back steady until he's told to get out of sight.

MEANWHILE.

The Navarro outfit isn’t palatial by Echolls standards, but the family came north long before any other big name in the area, and the story that they were fleeing trouble (a woman, or the church, the old men would say with half-envious smiles) is more family lore than dangerous rumor. They dug in, is the plain fact of the present day, and they won’t be dug out by drought or debt, rough-riding bigots or the railroad right-of-way.

 So it’s not necessity that pushes Eli Navarro away from stability and safety after Gus Toombs' death. It's not the pinch of hunger that leads him to take up Felix and the boys on their offer of drives the length of the Snake River, then longer. They don’t _have_ to go from protection to recovery, from fending off rustlers to tracking down stolen cattle and bringing thieves to justice. It just builds on itself, a young outfit in a valley that's sick of the old ones, barreling forward on Navarro shrewdness and - well, what Felix  _calls_ the Toombs' irresistible charm.

Eli never talks about the choice, to ride away from the house that had expanded over generations from the single room that some Navarro man had built around the well, so his woman wouldn’t have to carry water in. How it felt to grow up hearing women all over town talk about the love in that design, how his parents - faceless, now, however hard he tries to summon them from memory - how they had it, too.

He can’t pin down his reasons, exactly, or doesn’t want to look them in the eye. He’s good at what he does. Letty shows no sign of slowing down, and Ophelia’s got the men of the valley wrapped around her finger; she’ll make a fine rancher one day. They hold no grudges and are always glad to see him, and it’s enough.

It’s enough, until the day he follows a hunch down a tucked-away canyon, finds 200 head of stolen cattle and a smirking, skinny white boy on the finest damn horse he’s ever seen.

**Author's Note:**

> Lodessa prompted "Logan / Weevil, western au." This is all indirectly inspired by the pile of Louis L'Amour books I read in adolescence, and the notion of indoor plumbing as a grand romantic gesture is taken directly from one of his books, although I don't remember which one. Title is from the Ned Sublette song, "Cowboys are frequently, secretly fond (of each other)."


End file.
